Wherever Lynn Goes (2 page)

Gathering up my parcels and placing a large tip on the table, I left the tea room, excitement still like a heady wine, wonderfully inebriating. An enormous red bus rattled past outside, discharging noxious fumes. The din of rush-hour traffic was deafening. Taxi horns blared loudly. Tires squealed at the intersection. An irate driver leaned out the window of his Bentley to shout an obscenity at a long-haired youth who zoomed past on a motorcycle. Shops and stores disgorged crowds of flushed, irritable clerks and secretaries who stampeded for the nearest Underground entrance. I might feel madly reckless, but not enough so to throw away money on a taxi, and at this hour the buses would be better suited for sardines than people. I decided to walk. Smiling, filled with a sense of well-being, I turned a corner and, a short while later, found myself in the peaceful little cul-de-sac where weathered, ancient fiats overlooked a tiny square with leafy green trees behind a wrought-iron fence. The building where Mandy and I lived was the most dilapidated of the lot, tall and narrow, painted a dingy blue, crowded between a dusty brownstone and a Victorian relic that looked like a soot-stained marble wedding cake.

I was relieved to find Mrs. Wellington temporarily away from her post. Once she caught you in the foyer she was good for thirty minutes, rattling away interminably about her health, her cats, the state of the nation and the scandalous cost of pork. Mrs. Wellington, our landlady, was a plump, fussy, insatiably curious old dear given to horoscopes, scandal magazines, and other people's business. Her flat was on the ground floor, the door always open so she could see anyone who stepped into the building, and little escaped her eagle eye. She frequently informed Mandy that she ran a respectable house and refused to tolerate all these
men
trooping up and down the stairs at all hours, but in truth she tolerated everything but unpaid rent. As Mandy and I always paid promptly, we could have entertained gypsies all night without risking anything more than a severe tongue-lashing. Mrs. W. adored us, said we gave the place “class.” That was hardly a compliment, considering some of the other tenants.

Mrs. Wellington was so cheap she could hardly draw breath without being tipped for it, and she certainly didn't intend to waste good money on electricity before nightfall. The stairs were dark, and the place reeked of corned beef and cabbage and stale beer. We lived on the top floor, and by the time I reached our landing I was genuinely exhausted. Shifting the parcels, I took out my key and opened the door. I dropped the parcels on the living-room table and sighed with relief.

We occupied the entire top floor, and the flat was large and roomy, perfect for Mandy's parties. It was furnished with wildly mismatched furniture, littered with books and magazines and various feminine paraphernalia, and, always, dusty, as neither Mandy nor I was domestic. The wallpaper was hideous, faded green roses against a faded blue background, and the dismal gray carpet was threadbare. There was a constant draft from a window that refused to shut, the kitchen was gloomy, with dark brown linoleum and shockingly outdated appliances, the bathroom plumbing was madly unpredictable, but the place was homey and, best of all, quite inexpensive.

“Lynn?” Mandy called from her bedroom.

“You home already?”

“I've been home for
hours
, pet. I need a six-letter word for mysterious. Four down is prey. That makes the second letter r.”

“Arcane?” I suggested.

“A, r, c—that's it! You're a
wonder
, luv. There! I'm finished with the silly thing. I don't know why I bother.”

If Mandy wasn't experimenting with cosmetics or trying on clothes, she was reading or doing crossword puzzles. The closet shelves were piled high with hundreds of thrillers. I had received free review copies at the office and brought them to her by the dozen. Mandy devoured them with relish. She had once gone with a handsome inspector from Scotland Yard, and crime had fascinated her ever since—the bloodier the better.

“What about the play?” I called, slipping out of my shoes and moving over to the mirror to brush back a wave of long, glossy brown hair. “Did you get the part?”

“The afternoon was sheer disaster, luv. The producer, I use the word loosely, wanted … well, he took me out for a nice cozy drink and suggested a nice cozy arrangement. Poor man, he looked rather silly sitting there with Scotch dripping all over his bald head …”

Mandy stepped into the room, smiling a wry smile.

“You threw your drink at him?”

“The waiter was
scan
dalized. It was a very proper bar. I didn't really want the part, anyway. I'm no good in heavy drama. Light, frothy farce is my thing. If only Noel Coward were still alive …”

Amanda Hunt was tall and lanky, with enormous brown eyes and dark tawny gold hair that swirled around her shoulders in disorderly locks. Not really beautiful, she had a dry, sophisticated style that was distinctly her own. Men found her fascinating, and with her powerful magnetism and individuality she could have been quite successful had she really tried. Mandy was singularly unambitious—rather lazy, in fact, far more interested in being amused than in having a career. Her chief claim to fame thus far was her appearances on the telly as Maisie the Milkmaid in a series of commercials for Delicious Dairy Milk. Flippant, lighthearted, invariably cheerful, she was also shrewdly intelligent—something few of her merry companions ever suspected.

“Lynn!” she cried, seeing the parcels for the first time. “Have you gone berserk? The rent's due next Friday, we're both flat, and you buy out half the shops in London! I knew you'd crack one of these days, luv. Years of necessary penny-pinching have finally driven you over the edge—”

“I have something to tell you,” I said calmly.

“You've robbed a bank. I'll be a character witness, darling. We'll get you out of this some way—”

Smiling, I told her about Philip Ashton-Croft, about the book and the advance I'd already deposited. Mandy was very cool about the whole thing, taking the contract from me, carefully going over the fine print I'd merely skimmed myself.

“It seems like a fairly decent contract,” she said, handing it back to me, “although I'm not too sure about that clause concerning foreign rights. Don't expect me to seem surprised, pet. Didn't I tell you those articles were as good as anything Nancy Mitford ever wrote? I
knew
something would come of them.”

Mandy was my biggest fan. She felt my work for the Supplement was unworthy of my abilities, and had been after me for years to write a thriller. She was constantly giving me plot ideas—smashingly clever ones, too—but fiction was not my metier.

“I suppose you've chucked your job?”

I nodded, sitting down on the lumpy green sofa. “It's going to be a big job, expanding those articles into a book-length manuscript. I'll have to do tons more research, reorganize everything. I'm thinking of doing a whole section on Louise de La Valliere—”

“More about Madame de Thianges, too,” Mandy said. “I've always thought she got shortchanged by history, overshadowed by her sister. She's a fascinating woman.” Mandy had read all the books I brought home for research, had gone to the library on her own, and knew almost as much about the period as I did myself. “Darling, it's going to be
fun!
I'll help you with your notes and—”

Mandy chattered blithely, working up more and more enthusiasm for the project, and then we opened the parcels. She was elated with the sexy black dress, and tried it on immediately. The bodice fit like a glove, and her back was virtually bare. I wouldn't have dared wear such a dress, but on Mandy it looked sensational. She whirled around, her dark-gold locks flying in all directions.

“I feel ever so wicked! George will go out of his mind.”

“George? The trombone player?”

“No, luv, that's Craig. George is that darling croupier I brought up last week, the one who had the bit part in the Fellini film.”

Mandy had so many beaux it was almost impossible to keep them straight in one's mind. They ranged from a Member of Parliament to a handsome young stevedore, and she treated them all with a casual, merry disdain. They loved it. Mandy was always entertaining, always fun to be with, never demanding. With her, even a simple excursion like walking in the park took on the aspects of a madcap adventure. Though she frequently pretended to be bored by all this male attention, it was as necessary to her as air.

An hour later, surrounded by empty boxes and sacks and clouds of tissue paper, we were contemplating dinner. Lloyd was working late, and Mandy had turned down several invitations, planning to stay in and read the newest thriller. Although she adored pub-crawling and parties and the theater, she could be just as happy in housecoat and slippers, knocking around the flat. We had just decided to open some tins and heat up some leftovers when the telephone rang. Mandy tensed, giving me a nervous glance.

“There's no need to look so worried,” I said lightly. “It's probably one of your friends.”

“What if it's
him?
”

“He hasn't called for almost a week.”

“Lynn, I just have a feeling—”

“Nonsense.”

I got up and answered the phone.

“Hello?”

There was silence on the other end of the line. Then, after several seconds, a low, hoarse voice began to whisper.

“Lynn? Lynn, this is Daddy—”

“Sorry,” I said brightly, “wrong number.”

I hung up immediately. Mandy, standing beside me now, her cheeks a bit pale, said, “It
was
him.”

I nodded, not at all alarmed. The phone calls were irritating, and in
very
poor taste, but I refused to let them bother me. Someone with a sick sense of humor was playing a prank. That was all it amounted to. Mandy, however, found the calls terribly distressing, certain that they had some deep significance.

“Did he say anything
new?
” she asked in a strained voice.

“No, just the same old thing. ‘This is Daddy.' The chap hasn't much imagination, I'm afraid.”

“Lynn, it's—well,
obscene
phone calls I could understand, but this is
spooky!
”

“You read far too many thrillers.”

“He's been calling for over two months now, and it's always the same, like … like a voice from the grave.”

I smiled, moving over to the table and beginning to gather up the tissue paper. “My father died in Australia in 1959, I assure you. Besides, ghosts are hardly likely to utilize the London Telephone Exchange. I wish you'd forget about it, Mandy.”

“I wish I could. It gives me the shivers! Lynn, who could it possibly
be?
”

“I have no idea.”

“None of our friends—”

“I used a by-line on all my stories in the Supplement. He probably saw my name over one of them and looked me up in the telephone directory.”

“But our number's unlisted,” she protested. “We had it changed after the first couple of calls.”

We'd been over this several times before, and I knew it would be useless to argue with her about it. Addicted to thrillers, her mind cluttered with ideas for more, Mandy obstinately maintained that the calls were part of some intricate plot. I believe she actually expected me to end up on some dark street in Soho with my throat slit. At her insistence, I had informed the police, who, bored and wearily tolerant, suggested we get an unlisted number. We had, but somehow or other my caller had discovered it. There had been no threats, no mysterious warnings in the mail, no sinister-looking men in dark glasses who followed me on the street. The prankster would grow tired eventually and find another victim. Until then, I would continue to ignore the calls.

“Lynn,” Mandy said, “are you—are you
sure
your father's dead?”

“Of course I'm sure.”

We were in the kitchen now. The oven crackled ominously as part of a leftover casserole heated, and eggs boiled noisily on the ancient gas burner. As I set the table, Mandy tried to open a tin—for her a highly dangerous process which might well result in a surprise appendectomy. Still wearing the sexy black dress, looking as out of place in the kitchen as a duchess, she gouged at the tin, apprehensive but determined. Finally succeeding without bloodshed, she dumped the herring onto a plate, gave a sigh of exhaustion, and leaned against the scarred zinc drainboard.

“They always turn up in books,” she remarked.

“Who?”

“The deceased. He died in Australia under mysterious circumstances—”

“A heart attack,” I amended.

“—when you were thirteen years old. He'd been away from England for years. You didn't actually
see
the body, and—”

“Don't be ghoulish.”

“Lynn, I just
know
those phone calls mean something. I don't see how you can be so casual about them.”

“I try to be sensible, and I don't read thrillers.”

“Go ahead, make fun of me, but he
could
still be alive. He probably discovered a gold mine in Australia, or … or maybe he was involved in some nefarious scheme, innocently involved, of course, and found it necessary to disappear—”

Mandy cut herself short as great clouds of black smoke began to billow from the oven. There was a noise like machine-gun fire. She dashed to open the window. Grabbing a pair of tattered pot holders, I flung open the oven door and pulled out the charred remains of the casserole. As I dumped it into the trash bin, the eggs exploded, geysers of hot water spewing over the stove. I turned off the burner, feeling terribly frustrated. When the smoke cleared, Mandy shrugged her shoulders philosophically.

“You know, luv, one of us really
should
learn to cook.”

“I know,” I said bitterly.

“Oh well, who needs food?”